All you need is love (and a BIG handbag)

Just giving you a short preview of my latest book. Chapter 1 A half a packet of gum, a few skin-thin pages of a book, something religious, screwed up into careless balls and ... well, I’ll just come out with it … a lazily slung, used condom: this was all I could see from my vantage point under a bed that had seen more action than Madonna, in what had to be a contender for America’s dirtiest, grimiest, most sordid and sleazy motel room. Please don’t judge me; I was under the bed, not on it. I thought places like this existed only in the movies, but there I was, secreted under the bed. And what was I doing? Waiting for Jack, my husband, my beloved Jack … cheating Jack. Hiding under a bed? A grown woman? Give me a break. We all do things that we’re not proud of, and this was the only way of proving once and for all that Jack was guiltier of this than most. How could he? I took a deep breath to keep my emotions in check, but that phrase kept running through my head over and over again. How could he? How could he? And then the sneezing began, and I regretted a deep breath. Who knew that so much dust could accumulate under a bed? This place was so alien that even the dust behaved strangely, traveling horizontally along the grimy, biscuit-colored carpet to find my nostrils. “Shhhh!” I tried to tell my sinuses, but the sneezes kept coming, one after the other, and I was certain that he would choose that moment to walk in with his … with his … I don’t know what to call her. She’s obviously got something that I haven’t, or she’s able to give him something that I can’t. And I know things have been different since the boys were born, but that was what we wanted. We had been dreaming of starting a family ever since we got married; we tried everything, which was fun at first – we tried everything in every room and at all times of day, in positions that would make Ann Summers blush – but it lost its appeal when I failed to fall pregnant. Two years later, we are sitting in the doctor’s office sharing the most intimate details of our sex life with a doctor who looks like he might be enjoying the thought of us together a little too much, so we find another doctor and very soon start IVF. Two years later, we are blessed with Evan and Rhys, our little miracles. Everyone told me how lucky I was to be getting two for the price of one, but I didn’t feel it when my skin was stretching like pizza dough in the hands of a really terrible chef, and the boys were obviously already learning to tackle each other inside me. Don’t even talk to me about the delivery. The vibrations of my screams still haunt the delivery room at the hospital – “GET … ME … DRUGGGGS!” Ten years on and … well …